psychology

As it almost always was when I'd been too self-centered to see the truth of the matter, I felt impossibly foolish.

The colour of the water seems to be the colour of the glass into which it has been poured

Haslam leaves us in no doubt what we are supposed to make of Matthews' mental world: this is gibberish and nothing more.

As a pauper, the obvious destination for James Tilly Matthews was the Bethlem Hospital, already long known in popular slang as Bedlam. The principal public asylum in London, it had accepted dangerous and insane paupers as 'objects of charity' for centuries, and was proud of the claim that it had never turned anyone away.

It seems that there's a part of our psyche that doesn't know the difference between an agreement about cleaning the garage and an agreement about buying a company

There are people who fantasize about suicide, and paradoxically, these fantasies can be soothing because they usually involve either fantasizing about others' reactions to one's suicide or imagining how death would be a relief from life's travails. In both cases, an aspect of the fantasy is to exert control, either over others' views or toward life's difficulties. The writer A. Alvarez stated, " There people ... for whom the mere idea of suicide is enough; they can continue to function efficiently and even happily provided they know they have their own, specially chosen means of escape always ready..." In her riveting 2008 memoir of bipolar disorder, Manic, Terri Cheney opened the book by stating, "People... don't understand that when you're seriously depressed, suicidal ideation can be the only thing that keeps you alive. Just knowing there's an out--even if it's bloody, even if it's permanent--makes the pain bearable for one more day."This strategy appears to be effective for some people, but only for a while. Over longer periods, fantasizing about death leaves people more depressed and thus at higher risk for suicide, as Eddie Selby, Mike Amestis, and I recently showed in a study on violent daydreaming. A strategy geared toward increased feelings of self-control (fantasizing about the effects of one's suicide) "works" momentarily, but ultimately backfires by undermining feelings of genuine self-control in the long run.

Constantly seeking approval means you__e perpetually worried that others are forming negative judgments of you. This steals the fun, ingenuity, and spontaneity from your life. Flip the switch on this habit. If you__e lucky enough to have something that makes you different from everybody else, don__ be ashamed and don__ change. Uniqueness is priceless. In this crazy world that__ trying to make you like everyone else, find the courage to keep being your remarkable self. It takes a lot of courage to stand alone, but being unapologetically YOU is worth it!

Everything you say, everything you do and every decision you make comes back to you. If you want to make friends, be friendly. If you want to be rich, be generous, if you want to be understood by others, take time to be understanding of them. And if you want to be heard, then listen. Life is what you make out of it. So If you want the world to change, start with the one in the mirror. What you give is eventually what you get. Whatever it is you hope to achieve in this life, give it, nurture it, be it, and you will enjoy a lifetime filled with it many times over.

When the intensity it takes to extricate one from a negative state is equal to or greater than the intensity that perpetuated the state, then the person can be freed of that state

But psychology is a more tricky field, in which even outstanding authorities have been known to run in circles, 'describing things which everyone knows in language which no one understands'.

Translation error is compounded by bias error. We distort others by forcing into them our preferred ideas and gestalts, a process Proust beautifully describes: We pack the physical outline of the creature we see with all the ideas we already formed about him, and in the complete picture of him which we compose in our minds, these ideas have certainly the principal place. In the end they come to fill out so completely the curve of his cheeks, to follow so exactly the line of his nose, they blend so harmoniously in the sound of his voice that these seem to be no more than a transparent envelope, so that each time we see the face or hear the voice it is our own ideas of him which we recognize and to which we listen.

Intelligence rarely trumps human nature.

Wetiko is elusive and mercurial, for whatever we say wetiko is, it isn't, in that it is always more, less, and other than what we are able to say it is in language.

Seven Rules Formulated for Teaching Arithmetic:1) Consider the situation the pupils faces.2) Consider the response you wish to connect with.3) Form the bond; do not expect it to come by miracle.4) Other things being equal, form no bond that will have to be broken.5) Other things being equal, do not form two or three bonds when one will serve.6) Other things being equal, form bonds in the way that they are required later to act.7) Favor, therefore, the situations which life itself will offer, and the responses which life itself will demand. (p. 101)

The pioneer, the creator, the explorer is generally a single, lonely person rather than a group, struggling all alone with his inner conflicts, fears, defenses against arrogance and pride, even against paranoia. He has to be a courageous man, not afraid to stick his neck out, not afraid even to make mistakes, well aware that he is, as Polanyi has stressed, a kind of gambler who comes to tentative conclusions in the absence of facts and then spends some years trying to figure out if his hunch was correct. If he has any sense at all, he is of course scared of his own ideas, of his temerity, and is well aware that he is affirming what he cannot prove.

You can accomplish almost anything when you__e trying to accomplish what you care about. Wear yourself out with focused, disciplined work on a purpose that connects with who you truly are. You have a unique voice and a unique drive that are longing to be expressed. Start living through this expression and you__l find the joy and success you__e been hoping for. So follow your heart and take your brain with you every step of the way.

When you realise the difference between the container and the content, you will have knowledge.

It__ not other people__ job to make you happy and fulfilled; it__ yours. It__ important to always be nice and respectful of others, but it__ even more important to be nice and respectful toward yourself. You have to live with yourself the rest of your life, so stop being so hard on yourself. Focus on your strengths and lead by example. You are special and unique in every way. And if other people don__ appreciate you for who you are, it__ their loss. Remember, there are some people who don__ even like chocolate cake!